20131105.0851

First, my cousin's birthday is today.  I have already wished him the joy of it, because I am a good older cousin and remember to do such things.

Second, and more normally (in several senses, some of which may actually be fairly...perverse), I realized something after my wife and I watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Statistical Probabilities."  The plot is readily available, and I am certain that video of the episode can be easily had, so I will not re-hash the narrative here.  What I will suggest instead is that the episode speaks to a trope present in the main line of the Star Trek franchise (TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager; I refuse to include Enterprise in the discussion for a number of reasons, upon which I may elaborate later).  The trope is one that associates superior intellect with dehumanization.

The Star Trek universe is one that features a number of hyper-intelligent characters among its primary roles.  Most of those who appear regularly on the shows are graduates of a military academy modeled after an amalgamation of the United States' service academies--and those schools are perennially noted as among the best in the US.  As of this writing, in fact, the US News and World Report college ranking has

• The US Coast Guard Academy #2 among regional colleges in the North
• The US Air Force Academy #25 among national liberal arts colleges
• The US Merchant Marine Academy #3 among regional colleges in the North
• The US Military Academy #17 among national liberal arts colleges
• The US Naval Academy #12 among national liberal arts colleges

Presumably, those graduating from the fictional successor of those schools will be amply qualified, and, given the technologies hypothetically involved (and the physics upon which they purportedly rely), the qualifications will necessarily bespeak a fair degree of intelligence.  But some stand out even from academy graduates in terms of brainpower: Spock from TOS, Data from TNG, Bashir from DS9, and the Doctor from Voyager (who is the product of and modeled after academy graduates).  Each is the most intelligent member of the regular characters.  Each is also somehow proximal to but other than human; Spock is half-human, Data a human-mimetic machine who strives to become more human (necessarily implying a lack of humanity), Bashir an illegally genetically altered human (whose very existence makes him a second-class citizen who must get special dispensation to be in a position to help people), and the Doctor a holographic version of Data.  In each case, a superior intellect is coupled with a lack of humanity; being really smart is inhuman, problematic, Other.

What strikes me is the disjunction between the message being sent--that being smart is somehow bad because it makes the smart one less than human--and both the in-milieu need for intelligence (how else to operate and maintain computers that can handle the equations necessary to navigate at speeds faster than light, or to disassemble and reassemble living beings without killing them for more than a part of a second?) and the primary expected fan-base of science fiction generally and Star Trek more specifically: nerds.  There is a contradiction in the storytelling that the smartest characters, who ought to be the best equipped to live in the milieu, being relegated to secondary status.  There is something of sadism in the writers, and of masochism in the fans, that the writers (themselves likely nerds) heap abuse on the intelligent, and that we nerds so eagerly flock to a property that at some level insults us.